Page 143 of Puck the Coach's Son
My hands start to shake.
I set the phone face-up on the duvet. I stand up. I walk to the window. Private security is gone from the curb. Diane's car is in the driveway. A cardinal is on the fence. The sky is the pale winter blue of a Sunday that is about to be the worst Sunday of my life, and I stand at the window and I think, very calmly,He has changed his mind.
He has changed his mind and he is not going to answer because he is kind enough not to say it in writing.
He is going to Blackridge alone. He is going to let the distance do the work. He is going to let me read thedeliveredand understand.
He saidwait for me.
He said it in a corridor under fluorescent light with security on his arms and blood on his quarter-zip, and he said it with his eyes on my eyes, and I believed him.
I still believe him.
Thedelivereddoesn't change.
I sit down on the carpet under the window. I put my face in my hands. I do not make a sound this time, because Diane is downstairs and Paul is downstairs and I am not going to be the sound effect to their conversation, but I cry the whole way down into the carpet, and I think,Please, Maddox, please just one word, please just a thumb and a word, please.
The phone on the duvet lights up once and my heart launches and I lunge. It's Diane, from the kitchen, one floor down.
Come eat. Bring the phone. I'm not letting you be alone with it.
I wipe my face.
I pick up my phone.
I go down to my aunt.
22
MADDOX
Icall Harlan at eleven fifty-nine on Sunday morning.
He answers on the first ring.
“Maddox.”
“Yes to Blackridge.”
He exhales through the line. I hear a pen click on his end.
“Good man. I'll?—”
“I'm not done.”
“Okay.”
I'm sitting on my kitchen counter in Phoenix's apartment because my own kitchen counter is no longer mine in another day and I’ve started moving my things. Phoenix is at a mandatory player meeting at the arena about “character and the organization,” where Callahan is walking the team through the press line for tomorrow. The coffee maker I'm looking at is not mine. The view out the window isn't mine. Nothing in this building is mine. That's the clarity I'm working with.
“I want a contract for Theo Laurent at Blackridge.”
The line is quiet. Harlan is a professional. Harlan doesn't sayyou cannot be serious. Harlan takes a breath.
“Tell me what you mean.”
My free hand grips the edge of the counter.
“I mean what I said. Theo Laurent. Twenty. Rookie deal, entry-level, whatever the league minimum is. I don't care. He's good, Harlan. He was good Saturday night. He played two periods and won his first face-off clean and made a pass through his own legs to set up a goal with six seconds left. I'm telling you, as a guy who has played with a lot of forwards for eight years, the kid is good. Orrick should want him. Get Orrick on the phone.”
